30 LONDON BIRDS 



A lady lately took for a few months a house in 

 Chester Square. The drains were duly inspected and 

 pronounced faultless, and she took possession with 

 every prospect of a pleasant season. It was not to be. 

 A cloud of mystery hung over the house. Servants 

 were disturbed by midnight rappings and awaked at 

 daybreak by uncanny whisperings ; and one after 

 another complained of feeling ill, and gave warning. 



When at last the lady herself had given way to the 

 universal languor, and had, by doctor's advice, left 

 town to seek fresh roses in country air, it was found 

 that there was an unnoticed hole in the outer wall of 

 the house, through which Pigeons had found their 

 way in and out, and that the spaces between flooring 

 and rafters were a big dovecote, evidently of several 

 years' standing. There were living young birds snug 

 in nests on guano beds under the floors, and dead 

 birds in various stages of decay. Fourteen nests were 

 found in the wall of one bedroom. 



The origin of London tame Pigeons is lost in the 

 mists of antiquity. Dean Gregory in a paper on the 

 subject, published in one of the church parish maga- 

 zines, traces the colonies on St. Paul's Cathedral of 

 which there are two, one at the east, the other at the 

 west end, which keep carefully apart, and it is said 

 seldom or never intermarry to the fourteenth century, 

 when they were already well established. Among 

 other authorities for this he quotes Robert de Bray- 

 brooke, Bishop of London, who, in 1385, when Wycliffe 

 had scarcely been dead a year, and Geoffrey Chaucer, 



